Obama "is a cultural Muslim whose sympathies lie with the Islamic world in its life-death struggle against Israel"

Pitchforks? A popular revolution?

I don't know about a popular revolution, it's hard to get Americans to come out of the mall...
But I do have a pitchfork, and I'm going to put hand grips on it, just in case I need to get a good grip on things...

I might even bring my pitchfork to the voting place...After all, it's not a weapon, it's a farm implement...If the Black Panthers can show up with clubs, weapons, then surely I can show up with a farm tool...

It is Israel and the US that stand alone opposing peace. Is is Israel and the US that are fomenting nuclear war.

That might be right except for one thing...It's lunacy...

'Peace' for the 'Palestinians' and the rest of the Islamic world is not what you think or claim...Islamic 'peace' is what needs to be fought, tooth and nail by kufr, who do not relish the idea of being eaten by the beast...The beast never gets fed enough...Once it eats Israel, it will look for other prey...It is the beast that is Islam that is opposing the kufr idea of 'peace', which is also faulty but not as self centered as Islams...The Palestinian National Charter, and that of Hamas both declare no peace with Israel period, but to kill them or drive them off the land...Abu Mazen just said he would support a gang up attack on Israel...Now does that sound peaceful?

I don't think a nuke war would benefit anyone much except the Iranian Shia idea that lots of chaos would bring forth Mahdi...

I have no issue with the state of Israel existing, but I do have issues with the conditions under which Palestine is being occupied

If you have no issue with Israel existing, then you should be supporting Israel, because if the 'Palestinians' and their Mahoundian brothers have their way, Israel will cease to exist...

Please list the 'conditions' the 'Palestinians' are living under...

"But now, that it finally made its way into WaPo..."

No, the Washington Times -- the "conservative" alternative in the Beltway to the Post. The Washington Times, for example, carried articles by Diana West for years (though for some reason she never divulged, she moved on from there -- perhaps because she has become more and more blatantly anti-Islam in recent times).

The Washington Times is sort of like FOX News -- it's barely got its feet in the Mainstream, but it is still sneered at by Those Who Inhabit Reality.

#1. Policy...Never click on a link offered by a Mahoundian, an apologist...or a lunar-tic leftist, or frantic liberal...
These sites usually have nothing to offer, but they often have bugs that jump...So my advice is don't click on them...

I asked 'you' to describe it, and you give me a web site...
That's not an answer...

"""My positions may sound like lunacy, duh_swami. I admit that. Truth does sound like lunacy in our propaganda laden society""".

You don't have any truth Jon...What little you are accurate about gets drowned out in your misconceptions, misunderstandings, and lies...You refuse to see the facts of the matter even though it has been explained to you many times.
It's easy to deny speculation, but it is harder to deny historical facts, and Islamic realities...As long as you don't comprehend those, you will just repeat your same mantra's over and over...

Right. Deplorable conditions. Gaza ranks VERY high on international obesity. The only "necessities" those embargo-running ships were trying to import were munitions for Gaza's daily Northern Fireworks Shows.

http://www.israelwhat.com/2010/04/04/is-obesity-still-a-problem-in-gaza/

Jon..

Hugh describes it perfectly...

I don't know.......the way things are going it's becoming more and more likely (IMHO!)

Namely things like the dismissal of the new black panther's case. Combine that with their refusal to enforce the fraud parts of the Motor Voter law and race neutral enforcement of civil rights cases. What you have is atmosphere where many groups feel like they have no official place to petition for redress of grievances.

Now throw in the fact the he has done everything he can to discredit our substantial Judeo-Christian heritage and I have no doubt it is a powder-keg just waiting to blow!!

Sorry, just wanted to say that those couple of contributing reasons really only scratch the surface of the disenchantment of the American people! The volatility is there!!!

Channe,

I have no issue with the state of Israel existing, but I do have issues with the conditions under which Palestine is being occupied.

It sounds like you are saying that Israel is responsible for conditions in Palestine. The Palestine condition is a result of their own actions. The only actions that Israel have taken is to protect themselves from the aggression of their avowed enemy that wish nothing less than the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Palestinian authorities have repeatedly caused the inhuman conditions that they live under. They have been given hundreds of millions/billions of dollars over the years and have not build anything to improve their condition instead they have bought weapons and train terrorists. There culture is rotten from the inside out because of Islam. So, to make a change and improve the life and living conditions of the Palestinians is to remove Islam, nothing less will do.

You don't yet believe that Islam is the enemy of not only Israel but us as well. Whether you believe there is a God or not is not important, they do and are motivated by their belief system.

Israel is not stupid and I am sure that Netanyahu said what he said to politically put a good face on the situation. But they do not trust Obama at all.

Your ideas make sense only if you think in terms of PC and force our culture of right and wrong on them. They reject our culture and sense of right and wrong and wish to impose they beliefs on us. Wake up man!

You wrote "Radical islam is a muslim who truly wants democracy and to live in peace, standard islam is the muslim who wants to kill you, or subvert your way of live through whatever means possible."

You're so right. I used to have a muslim 'friend' when I was a naive youngster. I used to ask him, jokingly, what he would do if America was Islamic. He said 'when' and not 'if'. At the time I thought he was just joking, but now I know for sure.

Very informative summary of the history of Palestine. But Hugh left out the construction of a new fictious people, a new ethic group with the right to return to their "homeland" in the wake of the 1967-war:

"The ersatz people identified nowadays as the "Palestinians" are a collection of diverse Arab clans plus a smattering of other ethnic groups (such as Serbs -- these are the so-called Bosnian Muslims who were Serbian Orthodox Christians before their forced conversion to Islam -- as well as Circassians and Chechens, all imported by the Ottoman Empire from their lands of origin to the Middle East, including the Land of Israel, several centuries ago), which, for reasons virtually identical to those of the Roman Empire, have, since Israel's Six Day War of 1967, publicly declared themselves to be a distinct ethnic nation named after those very same defunct Philistines -- this despite the fact that the ancient Philistines were not even Arabs.

Moreover, in light of “Palestinian” claims to aboriginal status, it is ironic and noteworthy that the English-language cognate words “Palestine” and “Philistine”, as well as the Arabic-language word “Falastin”, are all derived (via Latin and, before that, Greek) from the biblical Hebrew-language word “Pelishtim”, meaning literally: “Invaders”. It is indeed telling that the “Palestinians” have created for themselves a faux ethnic identity whose very name originates, not from their own Arabic language, but rather from the Hebrew language.

That the "Palestinian" Arabs constitute a fictitious people is hardly surprising due to the fact that, by 1948, a substantial portion of the "Palestinian" Arab population resident in British-administered Mandatory Palestine originated, not from that territory, but rather from the surrounding Arab lands which now comprise the modern states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

In this regard, it is noteworthy that none of the foundational international instruments which deal with the Middle East conflict ever referred to the Arab inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine as the "Palestinian" people. For, prior to Israel's resurrection as a Jewish nation-state in 1948, only the Jewish inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine (although sometimes referred to as “Palestinian Jews” by the British and other third parties) identified themselves as just “Palestinians”, while the Arab inhabitants thereof (although sometimes referred to as “Palestinian Arabs” by the British and other third parties) instead insisted on identifying themselves as “southern Syrians”.

In deference to this non-assertion of "Palestinian" ethnic identity, the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922 referred to the local Arab population, collectively, as "existing non-Jewish communities", and the United Nations Palestine Partition Plan of 1947 referred throughout only to the creation of an Arab (rather than a “Palestinian”) State and to the prospective citizenry thereof as Arabs (rather than as “Palestinians”), while United Nations Security Council Resolution no. 242 of 1967 referred to them, collectively, as "the refugee problem".

In other words, the very language of these international instruments confirms that the vaunted concept of a "Palestinian" ethnic identity is a fabrication of more recent origin (popularized together with the nouveau appellation "West Bank" -- a de-Judaizing substitution for the historical names Judea and Samaria -- in the aftermath of the Six Day War)."

(Quoted from article by Mark S. Rosenblit).

The great political advantage of being recognized as a distinct people or ethnic group is obvious. They can demand a right to their own homeland and justice with reference to President Wilson´s idea, that all people are entitled to "self-determination". Wilson´s doctrine of self-determination was implemented as a guiding principles in the Versailles Peace Treaty after WWI, and used to dismantle Germany. The principle did not apply to etnic Germans living outside what was left of the German nation after WWI.

Twenty-five years after Versailles, Walter Lippmann would denounce Wilson´s doctrine of self-determination as "barbarous and reactionary":

"Self-determination, which has nothing to do with self-government but has become confused with it, is barbarous and reactionary: by sanctioning secession, it invites majorities and minorities to be intransigent and irreconcilable. It is stipulated in the principle of self-determination that they need not be compatriots because they will soon be aliens. There is no end to this atomization to human society. Within the minorities who have seceded there will tend to appear other minorities who in their turn will wish to secede."

The first major political block in the West to change its policy against Israel and fight for the rights of the "Palestinian people" was the EEC. The nine countries of the EEC met in Brussels on November 6, 1973, and issued a joint Resolution based on their dependence on Arab oil. This Resolution was totally in line with Franco-Arab policy towards Israel.

Among the new points added to EEC’s Israel policy was a demand that Israel should withdraw to the armistice lines of 1949, and that "the legitimate rights of the Palestinians" must be included in any definition of peace for the Middle East.

Using oil jihad and the creation of a fictitious people whose rights should be protected is probably the most effective strategies ever developed for legitimizing the destruction of Israel by means of jihad and undermining the West in general in combination with demographic conquest.

Yes, I did leave out not only the invention of the "Palestinian people" -- in Iraq we have Kurds and Arabs, and in Algeria, and Morocco, we have Berbers and Arabs, but in Israel we have Jews and Arabs who, magically, whenever necessary, suddenly metamorphose for the outside world, those Gazan Arabs and those "West Bank" Arabs, into the "Palestinian people," who have their own hastily-created "folk tales" and "folk songs" (merely Arab folk tales, and Arab folk songs, but given the adjective "Palestinian"). It's all about creating an utterly factitious "tiny people" so that the obvious asymmetry of the tiny Jewish people facing colossal odds, as they alwsays have in the Middle East, and always will (but if they maintain the deterrence that their technological advances give them, and if they cease to surrender any more territory for the sake not of "peace" but of a "peace treaty" that is merely a "truce treaty" or "hudna," designed by the Arab and Muslim side to be broken as soon as the Arabs and Muslims feel themselves strong enough to do so.

In any case, I have written about this so many times before that I suppose I simply forgot to go through the drill this time.

But here is one of those discussions of the "Palestinian People And How They Grew":

Of course, the invention of that “Palestinian people” -- and the careless way in which Israelis, too, contribute to the propaganda of their enemies by appearing to accept that very notion -- did a great deal to harm Israel (and the rest of the West) by providing a “national-liberation” cover for what was, is, and always will be a classic Jihad against an Infidel nation-state. That Jihad will not end, nor will its supporters be assuaged, by a further reduction in the size of Israel.

The Arabs sometimes have a habit of letting things slip. Zuheir Mohsen, the leader of the terrorist group As Saiqa, happened to give an interview to James Dorsey for the Dutch newspaper Trouw in March 1977, in which he said this:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Read the U.N. records, the records of what every Arab said, whether in a threatening or a cajoling tone, from 1948 or well before 1948, right up to the Six-Day War, and even for a short period beyond. It is only then that, out of the blue, comes this phrase “the Palestinian people.”

Before all that “Palestinian people” business, and before Israel came into the possession of the unallocated parts of the mandate, the “West Bank” and Gaza that Jordan and Egypt had seized in 1948-1949, and which Ben Gurion, unduly cautious, had not had the wit to seize back, there were far more people who had not been subject to a decades-long onslaught of Arab propaganda, and saw things more clearly.

One such person was Elfan Rees, the Adviser on Refugees to the World Council of Churches on Refugees, who in 1957 wrote this in “The Refugee Problem Today and Tomorrow”:

"I hold the view that, political issues aside, the Arab refugee problem is by far the easiest postwar refugee problem to solve by integration. By faith, by language, by race and by social organization, they are indistinguishable from their fellows of the host countries. There is room for them, and land for them, in Syria and in Iraq. There is a developing demand for the kind of manpower that they represent. More unusually still, there is the money to make this integration possible. The United Nations General Assembly, five years ago, voted a sum of 200 million dollars to provide 'homes and jobs' for the Arab refugees. That money remains unspent, not because these tragic people are strangers in a strange land, because they are not; not because there is no room for them to be established, because there is; but simply for political reasons."

And that is where things stand now. These are the shock troops of the Jihad. They are no longer, if they ever were, a “tragic people.” They have managed to turn themselves into people battening on a steady diet of hysteria and hate. Just look at every photograph of those car-swarms in Gaza, and those Hitlerian rallies, and those Der-Stuermer like photos and television shows that the “Palestinian” Arabs feed themselves.

And as long as they are the spoiled children of the “refugee” world, as long as they hog the money and the limelight at the U.N. and in all of its constituent succursales and meetings (in Durban on “Racism” that turned into a kind of lynch-mob against Israel, in Cairo on “the family” that turned into a kind of lynch-mob against Israel, and so on), several hundred millions real refugees who are not political pawns, including a great many who are refugees because they are non-Muslims or non-Arab Muslims who have been fleeing the discrimination, persecution, and murder that Muslim Arabs have inflicted on them, will never get the attention they rightly deserve.

[Posted by Hugh on May 29, 2008]

Whatever else you take away from the above, please note, and disseminate to others, and use in your attempst to enlighten others, the quotes from both Zuheir Mohsen and Elfan Rees. They are hard to forget or overlook or rebut, and they do make an impact.

Jon, why would you give a link to Norman Finkelstein's website as an authoritative source. Finkelstein is an anti-Semitic Jew. I've got one of his books, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict." Finkelstein is fiercely anti-Israel and self-loathing. And yes, Jews can be anti-Semitic.

Hugh, you sound at least semi-rational, though I think many of the points you make above are irrelevant and misleading. But let's take just one statement you made for starters. I could address everything, but that can tend to bog discussions down. Let's take this statement.

"It is not "occupied" in the juridical sense, and those who claim it is either are unwitting passers-on of Arab propaganda, or are witting passers-on of Arab propaganda."

On July 9,2004 the International Court of Justice rendered it's advisory opinion on the legality of the separation wall that isolates what is referred to as Occupied Palestinian Territory from the remainder of the West Bank. Here is the question that was asked of the ICJ from the United Nations General Assembly:

"What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, as described in the report of the Secretary-General, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions?"

The verdict of the court is described here:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/09/israel.barrier/index.html

In the ICJ's verdict it's first finding referred to the U.N. Charter principle that prohibits acquisition of territory by war. According to the court "it is apparent...that the wall's sinuous route has been traced in such a way as to include within [the Israeli side] the great majority of the Israeli settlements in the [O]ccupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem)." The court found that the settlements "have no legal validity" and constitute a "flagrant violation" of international law.

So given that the ICJ, which is regarded as the highest court in the land, regards Palestinian territory as occupied and the separation wall as a flagrant violation of international law, on what basis do you say that there is no "juridical sense" in which Palestinian territory is occupied?

See, what seems to be the case at this website is everyone just asserts. Nobody takes the time to actually provide the evidence needed to justify their assertions. I am not suggesting anybody take my word for an assertion. These are not my opinions. These are the opinions of the ICJ. If people here would consider justifying their assertions before making them I think everyone here would greatly benefit. That is, if truth is the goal.

Of course he's not anti-Semitic at all, but the reason I go to his website is because I literally cannot find another source that reported the roll call of the vote. It's just not widely reported. For some reason our media isn't generally interested in reporting that the US and Israel stand virtually alone against the world in their rejection of a peaceful settlement. This allows people to pretend that this is just a very vexing and difficult problem that nobody knows how to solve. And we can pretend that we're out trying to promote the "peace process." And we can pretend that if only the Arab's would get on board with peace we could solve this thing, but instead all they want to do is drive the Jews into the sea. It's difficult to sustain these myths when we look at the roll call.

So it wouldn't matter if he was anti-Semitic. It could be a KKK website, but it's a source for the roll call of the vote.

"And yes, Jews can be anti-Semitic."

Actually they can not. They can be anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, but if they are antisemitic they must be against all people belonging to the Semitic language group including Hebrew and Arab speaking people.

Robert Wistrich has emphasized the problematic nature of the term "antisemitism", derived from a group of cognate "Semitic" (i.e., stemming from the biblical Shem, one of Noah´s three sons) languages - Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Ethiopic - and applied, inappropriately, to a pseudo-scientific racial designation by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr in the 1870s.

Regardsless, for the past century, as Wistrich notes,

the illogical term "antisemitism" ... (w)hich never really meant hatred of "Semites" (for example ARABS) at all, but rather hatred of Jews, has come to be accepted in general usage as denoting all forms of hostility towards Jews and Judaism trougghout history.

-Writes Andrew G. Bostom in the opening chapter of "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism", 2008.

"Jews" can hate their own culture, nation state, and religion as anybody else can for an number of reasons but then it seems illogical to call them Jews.

I will propose that we simply drop the term "antisemitism" altogether and use the much simpler and more precise concept, "Jew hate" or "judeofobia" instead.

Is a Christian who hates Christianity or a Jew-hating Jew consistent concepts?

I do not know how to describe a Jew who sides with Israel's mortal enemies - those who are dedicated to Israel's destruction - other than anti-Semitic. Both Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky meet with Hamas and Hezbollah jihadists. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are Iranian proxies dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish state. How can these two Jews be anything other than anti-Semitic?

You invoke the United Nations as an arbiter or international law. Some might argue, just as Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations was begun, the United Nations began with noble intentions (the proposition is debatable I think), but it has degenerated into little more than a crass, biased political body, devoid of morals and ethics. Some properly call the United Nations a criminal body which is guided by third-world (predominantly non-aligned) dictatorships and thugacracies that vote in league with Organization of Islamic Conference dictates.

The U.N. Charter principle you quote, the one which prohibits the acquisition of territory by war is a bit of hypocrisy, is it not? This language is included in the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 242. This statement renders the United States of America an illegal entity; as white European colonialists and settlers overspread the north American continent by aggressive use of force. There was nothing defensive about the conquest and expropriation of Indians and Mexicans by European colonialists. Who is complaining today? Not the UN. This is the history of the world. Do you also hold that the United States - like Israel - constitutes an illegal occupation? If not, why not?

"In the ICJ's verdict it's first finding referred to the U.N. Charter principle that prohibits acquisition of territory by war. According to the court "it is apparent...that the wall's sinuous route has been traced in such a way as to include within [the Israeli side] the great majority of the Israeli settlements in the [O]ccupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem)." The court found that the settlements "have no legal validity" and constitute a "flagrant violation" of international law."

This quote is a political statement reflecting the balance of power in the UN and not a reasoned legal analysis.

Eugene Rostow, former Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs wrote:

The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there.

By violently rejecting Jewish settlement, the Palestinian Arabs are exhibiting behavior which is unacceptable, even dispised in the civilized world. In this they echo most other Muslim countries that have a prohibition on Jews living there, where land transfers to a Jew can carry the death penalty. These practices should be universally condemned and rejected. Arabs insist it is unacceptable for a few hundred thousand Jews to live among millions of Arabs while Israel's Arab citizens are almost 20% of Israel's population.

The Israeli government did not move to prohibit settlement (which would have required new laws) and, in fact, offered financial incentives to Jews to move to the territories. But these settlement communities did not exploit any Arab ownership or displace any Arab community or farm. The Jewish settlements have been established only on:

- Land in pre-existing Jewish communities, or

- Land that was unowned (that is, was previously controlled by Jordan and had no private owner), or

- Land purchased from established owners.

The propagandistic idea of Palestinian Arabs being "forced out" is not the case. Much land was still empty or underutilized. Many Jews bought the land or dwelling they moved to. When public land was involved, Israeli settlements were established only after an exhaustive investigation process, under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Israel, designed to ensure that no communities were established on private Arab land.

A segment of a 1994 documentary "Road to Palestine" (Discovery Channel) focuses on the case of Mohammed Khatib, an Arab whose land was allegedly stolen by Israel for a "settlement" near Jerusalem. In fact, the land was taken by eminent domain for the development project, mostly from Jewish owners, several of them wealthy and prominent. The show emphasizes Khatib's claim to his land, implying the Israelis had disputed it and seized his property, but nothing of the sort occurred. His claims were valid and were the basis of compensation, same as his Jewish neighbors.

Since 1967, Israeli governments have maintained a willingness to withdraw from areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a peace agreement with the Arabs, within the framework of UN Security Council Resolution 242. In such a case, it was commonly expected that at least some of the settlements would have to be uprooted, just as the Israeli town of Yamit was dismantled following Israel's 1979 peace agreement with Egypt. At Camp David in July 2000, Ehud Barak reportedly offered to uproot all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and the isolated settlements on up to 95 percent of the territory of the West Bank, as part of a final status agreement. The Palestinian Arabs rejected this offer.

Re: The legality of Jewish settlements.

The settlements are not "illegal" as you and ICJ claim.

The Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to settlements even though you will often hear the claim that it does. Israel took over the land in a defensive war in 1967 from rulers (Jordan, Egypt) who themselves had recently acquired control of the land by aggressive war. The only internationally recognized agreements are those of the Oslo process which do not in any sentence prohibit settlements. At some points in time Israel has voluntarily agreed to a temporary halt to new settlements in anticipation of negotiating breakthroughs.

But the repeated reversion to terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs has ended such restraint. The endlessly repeated refrain about "occupied territories" is propaganda, since a) the territories never belonged to Palestinian Arabs, b) the Palestinian Authority was given control of the areas, and c) the only reason Israel continues to exert control is in reaction to Palestinian Arab violence.

The United Nations has frequently addressed the question of Israel's policies and activity of Israelis in the territories, starting with Resolution 242, passed right after the 1967 war. That Resolution seeks a just resolution of the conflict and calls for withdrawal and mutual recognition, but it says nothing about legality. Resolution 338, passed after the 1973 Yom Kippur war, requires Israel and the Arabs to negotiate peace. By insisting that the Palestinians negotiate with Israel, the Security Council Resolution implicitly agrees that the occupation itself does not violate international law.

Later Security Council resolutions - numbered 446, 452 and 465 - do indeed condemn Israel's policy of building settlements in the occupied territories and declare that these settlements have "no legal validity."

However, these are political statements reflecting the balance of power in the UN and not a reasoned legal analysis. The Resolutions are not binding on Israel and do not of themselves create illegality.

At Camp David in 2000 and Taba in 2001 Israeli Prime Minister Barak offered to redeploy and uproot settlements from up to 95 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip. Settlements in the remaining 5 percent of the West Bank  where the majority (about 70%) of the settler population lives are just over the arbitrary Green Line from Israeli cities and would be annexed to Israel and other land given in exchange. These were serious Israeli offers -- when Israel made peace with Egypt, settlements in the Sinai were dismantled. If settlements are the "real problem" then why was this offer unacceptable?

It would be very hard to find documented cases of actual exploitation of Palestinian Arabs in order to establish Jewish settlements, notwithstanding the tsunami of allegations. That is not to claim everyone is happy about everything that happened, but that is different from a cause that requires bloody violence and death.

Eminent Domain cases, for example, cause hard feelings and local political fights in the United States and other countries all the time, but they are settled in courts or by elections. If unfair settlement practices by Israelis could be documented, then compensation or other arrangements could have long since been disposed of by negotiation. Only insane fanatics resort to violence -- in a country with a real government, they are quickly suppressed.

Giving Gaza to the "Palestinians" did not improve the security of Israel. On the contrary it became a launching pad for new jihadist attacks against Israel and its civil population and quicky taken over violently by the fast Jihadist of Hamas.

You wrote: "I will propose that we simply drop the term "antisemitism" altogether and use the much simpler and more precise concept, "Jew hate" or "judeofobia" instead."

That's fine. I'm OK with Jew-hater. Only you and Dr. Wistrich assume Muslim-Arabs are Semites. I do not make this assumption. Why should we assume these peoples are Semites? Because of the Biblical narrative in the 16th chapter of the book of Genesis? I know fellow Jews who call these people our "brothers" or our "cousins," because of the Biblical narrative whereby Avram (later Avraham) took his wife's concubine Hagar, who then birthed the patriarch an illegitimate son. This was a terrible sin - a significant lack of faith - on Avram's part. Hagar was an Egyptian (Mizraim). According to the tenth chapter of the book of Genesis: "....And the sons of Ham (were) Cush, and Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan...."

Thus Ishmael's mother is a daughter of Ham; sister of Canaan. You may recall, like many of these Arabs, the ancient Canaanites also sacrificed their sons and their daughters to their gods; just as the Arabs do with their children as martyrs to Allah. This is savagery, plain and simple. Would you not agree that 9/11 was an unmitigated act of barbarism and savagery? This is the Arab culture and religion; suicide bombings. These were /are Arabs Ipso Facto who commit these atrocities as a pleasing offering to the god Allah no less so than their ancestors did for the god Molech.

Why should we consider these savage peoples Semites when they behave as Canaanites?

You wrote: "Since 1967, Israeli governments have maintained a willingness to withdraw from areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a peace agreement with the Arabs, within the framework of UN Security Council Resolution 242. In such a case, it was commonly expected that at least some of the settlements would have to be uprooted, just as the Israeli town of Yamit was dismantled following Israel's 1979 peace agreement with Egypt...."

I am unalterably opposed to this form of national suicide. While you might argue, the Sinai is not historic Israel, I do not see any benefit to Israel relinquishing the Sinai. Israel captured the Sinai through defensive wars beginning with the 1967 Six Day War of Arab aggression. Egypt again mobilized in the Sinai in order to invade Israel October 1973. Camp David handed Israel a cold war with Egypt. With or without the Sinai, the settlements, the airfields, the oil fields, etc., Israel would have had a cold war or a cold "peace" with Egypt. Not only that, it set a terrible "land for peace" precedent for further concession of precious and strategic land.

Only you and Dr. Wistrich assume Muslim-Arabs are Semites. I do not make this assumption.

You forgot Bostom and a whole lot of scholars in language and ethnology, and you are quite wrong here! Arabs are Semites, scientifically speaking:

"In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם, translated as "name", Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. 

This family includes the ancient and modern forms of Akkadian, Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Phoenician, Tigre andTigrinya among others.
As language studies are interwoven with cultural studies, the term also came to describe the extended cultures and ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied peoples as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.

The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites. It was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45). In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term.

The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the Greek derivative of that name, namely Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is Semite.

The term "anti-Semitic" (or "anti-Semite") overwhelmingly refers to Jews only. It was coined in 1879 by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in a pamphlet called, "The Victory of Germandom over Jewry". Using ideas of race and nationalism, Marr argued that Jews had become the first major power in the West. He accused them of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879 Marr founded the "League for Anti-Semitism".

(Quoted from Wkipedia article).

So the word ”Semitic” denoted both Hebrews and Arabs etc. but the word ”antisemitic” changed meaning in the the popular and political culture after the 1870s to only mean hatred against (or fear) of Jews.

Rather confusing and inconsistent I would say.

Even the Arabs were confused when Hitler proclaimed his antisemitic policy:

” … In the last days of Rashid Ali’s regime, on the first and second of June 1941, soldiers and civilians launched murderous attacks on the ancient Jewish community in Baghdad. This was followed by a series of such attacks in other Arab cities, both in the Middle East and in North Africa.

While in Berlin, Rashid Ali was apparently disquieted by the language and, more especially, the terminology of anti-Semitism.

His concerns were authoritatively removed in an exchange of letters with an official spokesman of the German Nazi Party. In answer to a question from Rashid Ali as to whether anti-Semitism was also directed against Arabs, because they were part of the Semitic family, Professor Walter Gross, director of the Race Policy Office of the Nazi Party, explained with great emphasis, in a letter dated October 17, 1942, that this was not the case and that anti-Semitism was concerned wholly and exclusively with Jews. On the contrary, he observed, the Nazis had always shown sympathy and support for the Arab cause against the Jews.

In the course of his letter, he even remarked that the expression “anti-Semitism, which has been used for decades in Europe by the anti-Jewish movement, was incorrect since this movement was directed exclusively against Jewry, and not against other peoples who speak a Semitic language.”

This apparently caused some concern in Nazi circles, and a little later a committee was formed that suggested that the Führer’s speeches and his book Mein Kampf should be revised to adopt the term “anti-Jewish” instead of “anti-Semitic” so as not to offend “our Arab friends.”

The Führer did not agree, and this proposal was not accepted. There was still no great problem in German-Arab relations before, during, and even for a while after the war. ...”

(Quoted from Bernard Lewis: The New Anti-Semitism).

So think again!

"This statement renders the United States of America an illegal entity; as white European colonialists and settlers overspread the north American continent by aggressive use of force."

The point of the UN Charter is a recognition that the actions of the past are unwise in the present nuclear age. Hitler invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia and the result was something like 100 million dead people. This is why the world came together and said that the old way of might makes right needs to be set aside. We need to do something else or else we will all kill ourselves.

So yes, if migrants attempted a US style colonialist action with the corresponding genocide it would be illegal and should be illegal. It was deeply immoral then, but it's not just immoral now. It's also illegal under international law.

Ipso Facto: "Is a Christian who hates Christianity or a Jew-hating Jew consistent concepts?"

I cannot say they are entirely consistent. A person freely chooses to be a Christian. One can be born of Christian parents and raised as a Christian, just as a Jew can be born of Jewish parents and raised as a Jew. To be a Christian is a choice however. A person is born a Jew. The only choice is whether a person decides to be a practicing Jew to one extent or another. As it is difficult to be a practicing Jew, many Jews are not practicing Jews. Jews who are uncomfortable with their Jewishness, express their discomfort in many ways. Some convert to other dominant religions, such as Christianity or Islam. Some deny they are Jews in some way or another. Others like Finkelstein and Chomsky resort to rhetorical acts of violence the Jewish state and an identification with Israel's enemies.

"This quote is a political statement reflecting the balance of power in the UN and not a reasoned legal analysis."

The ICJ ruling is a political statement, but your quotations from a US State Department official are not? We should regard detailed and reasoned court judgments as political, but quick statements from the US State Department should be accepted.

The rest has too many errors to correct, except let me offer this with regards to your erroneous assertions regarding Camp David.

http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2010/06/arafat-waled-away-from-sweetheart-deal.html

Jon, you wrote: "The point of the UN Charter is a recognition that the actions of the past are unwise in the present nuclear age. Hitler invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia and the result was something like 100 million dead people. This is why the world came together and said that the old way of might makes right needs to be set aside. We need to do something else or else we will all kill ourselves....."

Nevertheless, I find the hypocrisy on the part of the US (though I am an American citizen) palpable given her own history of violent conquest and expropriation of land; and given that the US is in the forefront of this effort to take historic Jewish land from Israel in order to give it to our enemies who are dedicated to our annihilation.

Americans would never dream of doing this with American land. Perhaps you know, American Indian tribes (Lakotah Sioux for instance) are seeking the return of their native lands from the US government, citing repeated treaty violations among other things. I do not support the Sioux Indians or their cause. Nor do I accept your view that actions in the past are "necessarily" unwise or wholly immoral. Like I said, the American example is the history of the world. Though there were excesses, these were not unprecedented. I would argue, most Americans are proud of their history. There is no great movement today here in the US to redress these expropriations or removals. President Andrew Jackson's image is still on our twenty dollar bill. General Jackson was a terrific Indian fighter; an American hero. He pushed the 1830 Indian Removal Act through Congress, thereby expelling the five civilized tribes (Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee and Creek Indians) west of the Mississippi river. Jimmy Carter wrote in his book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," his Plains, Ga. farm is on land that was stolen by his grandparents from the Creek Indians. Cherokee Indians were also expelled from Georgia in the Trail of Tears. Can you imagine the audacity of Carter lecturing tiny Israel about land?

But unlike white Europeans (North America), the Jews have a 4000 year history in the land of Israel. This is our land. It does not belong to the Arabs. The Arabs, not the Jews, are squatters in our land. And contrary to Hitler's invasions of sovereign countries - you cite Poland and Czechoslovakia as examples - there was no sovereign in "Palestine" following the first world war. The Ottoman empire was defeated by the allies. Lands were parceled out. Israel was "re-constituted" as the Jewish people's national homeland. Jordan constituted 75% of the British Mandate for the Jewish National Homeland. Jordan was supposed to be Israel but the British illegally carved it out of the Mandate, giving it to Hashemite King Abdullah, a Saudi prince. Jordan's occupation of Judea and Samaria following the 1948 war was illegal. In the nineteen years Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria, the Arabs never demanded an independent "Palestinian" state. They tried to destroy the tiny coastal strip which was called Israel. Terror, war, violence is all we got from the Arabs. Only after Israel once again took possession of their / our ancient land in 1967 did the Arabs invent this narrative of a Palestinian people who were dispossessed by the Jews, as Hugh wrote above.

Jon: "So yes, if migrants attempted a US style colonialist action with the corresponding genocide it would be illegal and should be illegal. It was deeply immoral then, but it's not just immoral now. It's also illegal under international law...."

I understand Israelis and American Jews often attempt to justify their / our possession of this land according to "international law." I don't. I'm sure you are aware, international law, since the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine has evolved over time and not in Israel's favor, in large part because of Muslim Arab oil, power and influence in the United Nations and the oil-dependent / addicted international community; primarily the West. We possess our land by right, international law notwithstanding. We don't need the pro-Muslim Arab, immoral international law to sanction our existence or our possession of this tiny piece of land.

Wildjew, I can understand your frustration that Americans did exactly what Israel is doing today. But does that make it right? Shouldn't we look back on that with shame? The American colonists slaughtered for years, and now that the victims and perpetrators are gone we're finally Dancing with Wolves. It's largely crap. I agree. Jackson is a genocidal maniac and he's praised.

In fact the US has long been far more murderous than Israel. Death by the US and it's client states makes Israel's crimes pale. Look at Indonesia and Vietnam as just a couple of examples. Actually my criticism of Israeli policies is really more criticism of the US than it is of Israel. The US is the real master. We're the ones that permit Israel to do what it does, and I think we do this for strategic purposes. It's kind of nice to have this powerful client state in this region of the world that is willing to do our bidding. They'll bomb Iran if we ask them to. We asked them to support South Africa's crimes, which they did. South Africa killed all kinds of people during the apartheid years. So here they are this little military base in this resource rich area. We want instability to provide excuses for our own interventions. Jews are the ones that suffer, not Americans, as desperate Palestinians resort to their pathetic rockets and suicide bombing, which is a real danger.

It is Americans that need to be convinced to accept the peaceful resolution to the conflict, which is in Israel's best interest. Do you really think it's wise to continue to threaten a potentially nuclear Iran? You've got Pakistan with nukes, a country who's population is very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Israel is in danger and it is the US that has put it in this position. Not to mention the far more sad suffering of the Palestinians. This could all be ended if Americans would put pressure on our government to make it accept peace.

Jon, I don't know if it is frustration, so much as an awareness of American history. Americans did not exactly do what Israel is doing today. Israel's wars have been defensive wars against Muslim Arab aggression. America's wars of conquest were not defensive wars. Israel is in her historic land. Not so the Americans; largely the descendants of white European immigrants. You ask, "But does that make it right?" Like I said, I am not passing judgment on the American experiment except to point to the hypocrisy of the Americans lecturing Israel about land.

Should we look back on that with shame? No. We should look back at our own history, even as we lecture Israel about her historic homeland. That is all I am asking.

The US is the real master, you are right. I don't like this unhealthy relationship. I want Israel to wean herself from American aid and dependency. I don't like foreign aid because it comes with strings.

We are not the ones that permit Israel to do what it does. Israel generally does what it does to survive in a dangerous "neighborhood." If Israel bombs Iran's nascent nuclear sites it will be in spite of American pressure, not because of it. Make no mistake about it, President Bush and now Obama have done doing their utmost to discourage Israel from acting in her own self-defense against a nuclear Iran. It will be a shame if Israel bows to immoral American pressure. The entire world will pay the price one day. Mark my word. These are monsters who are seeking the most powerful weapons on earth. They will use them on us one day. It will be unimaginable suffering. You cannot conceive of the future one day on this earth should Iran go nuclear. Americans like yourself are very foolish and shortsighted indeed. No less so than disgraced men like Neville Chamberlain and other appeasers.

My guess is Israel supported South Africa because the government of South Africa was one of the few nations in Africa friendly to Israel. I'm not defending it. Israel has been increasingly isolated for no good reason. Why do the nations of the world hate Israel? Why have the nations historically hated the Jews and persecuted the Jews and slaughtered the Jews?

There is no peaceful resolution to this conflict. It's barbarism and savagery against civilization. There is no peaceful resolution with savages. That is where we disagree, you and I. King Solomon wrote "there is a time for peace and a time for war." This is a time for war. Discerning men and women know the times in which we are living. It will be increasingly evident even to people like you as the years progress. There will be no peace. Not until there is a massive nuclear holocaust and a massive slaughter, initiated by the Muslim world. It is what you are advocating. Mass slaughter of millions, if not billions. This is the nightmare naive people like yourself advocate. Mass-slaughter at the hands of Islamic savages. My guess is, you will have your wish.

There will be no peace. Not in this world. Maybe in the world to come.

"King Solomon wrote "there is a time for peace and a time for war."

And Churchill wrote: "Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war."

And I agree with your history and moral lesson to Jon.

Ebonystone wrote:

BHO says he's a practicing Christian, but the "church" he attended for 20 years was the UCC temple run by the vile Rev. Wright, whose racist rantings sound more like the hate-filled screams of an imam than the preaching of any Christian minister I've heard. The message of Wright's tabernacle is a lot closer to Islam than to any version of Christianity.
....................

You're not wrong, Ebonystone.

"Barack Obama, Nation of Islam and Black Liberation Theology"

http://www.intelligentconservatism.com/?p=32

Oh dear, the inane Jew-hating Jon is here soiling this thread. Too bad you were born 65 years too late to pour the Zyklon crystals into the showers. By God, that must hurt you, little Nazi boy. The Holocaust wasn't enough for you. You consisder Hitler a failure only because he didn't grant you your wish of exterminating every Jew on the planet. You want Hezbollah to finish the job Hitler started but couldn't finish. Of course, you would have hated it had you been around at the time of the breakout from Sobibor. You would have felt sorry for the German and Ukrainian Guards who were shot by escaping Jews. We know your type, because we defeated your type 65 years ago. And we'll do it again if we ditch political correctness and rid our country of you and the rest of the feckless parasites like you. You are a stain on the West. Had you lived here 65 years ago, you would have sided with Hitler and we would have cheered you on your way to the hangman's noose, because you are a Haw Haw, shrilling for the enemies of the West, even when that enemy would enslave us and murder our women just like in Iran.

Israel didn't drive 700k out of their territory in 1948. They left Israel voluntarily on the advice of Israel's enemies, confident in their belief that they would destroy Israel and then they could return. Israel won and they didn't come back, brainless pig. And why should these feckless wasters get compensation? We stupidly give them billions every year. The million plus Jews driven out of Islamic countries didn't get a penny in compensation. Instead they had to build a functioning state on a tiny sliver of land. And unlike the feckless layabouts we call 'Palestinians' they succeeded.

So get lost lying terrorist-loving Mohammedan troll.

Well I suppose Arab leaders would invite Arabs to leave since Israeli military attacks were destroying towns. And I also suppose they optimistically hoped they would be able to return, but that didn't happen. This doesn't mean that Israel didn't drive 700,000 people from their homes in 1948.

But Israeli propaganda has exaggerated claims of the Arab orders to flee. Palestinian scholar Whalid Khalidi and Irish scholar Erksine Childers have examined the archives of the Arab radio broadcasts and found that no official orders to flee were given by Arab leaders.

John Roy Carlson says figures of 750,000 refugees is "sheer propaganda." But Benny Morris, one of the most respected historians on the conflict around, and a Zionist, says 700,000 refugees were created as the IDF expelled Arab residents from towns and others fled for fear of what would happen to them. A small number left due to instructions from Palestinian leaders.

Alan Dershowitz is a committed Zionist and apologist for Israeli terror and he quotes Morris extensively in "The Case for Israel." He offers Morris # of 700,000 as a respectable figure while admitting that the final # is difficult to know. It's a perfectly reasonable value based on respected scholarship.

None of this changes my argument. Arabs were driven from their homes violently by the IDF. It doesn't matter what you call them. Whether they were formally called "Palestinians" is irrelevant. They owned their own homes and so they were entitled to them. To say they are obligated to move to Jordan is like saying whites in America should be driven from their homes into Iowa since so many people are white in Iowa.